In The Business Of Success

Nearly 40 U.s. Firms Thriving For Centuries

July 05, 1985|By New York Times News Service

NEW YORK — When President Reagan works out on his exercise treadmill at the White House, he lopes along on belting from the nation`s oldest business: J.E. Rhoads & Sons Inc., of Delaware, established in 1702. When President George Washington wanted a gift for the Marquis de Lafayette he chose Number Six cologne, a scent still on sale at the nation`s oldest apothecary, Caswell-Massey Co. (1752), then of Newport, R.I.

In a nation stirred by entrepreneurship, where 90 percent of start-up businesses fail within their first decade of existence, there are still almost 40 companies that have operated since the time of the Revolution. Some of these have scarcely changed in more than two centuries: The nation`s oldest undertaking concern, Kirk & Nice Inc. (1761), built coffins for the soldiers that were killed George Washington lost the Battle of Germantown in 1777;

today, a Kirk scion operates the funeral home on its original site near Philadelphia.

Other companies loosened their family ties decades ago and evolved to match their changing markets. Dexter Corp. (1767) in Windsor Locks, Conn., the oldest company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, started as a sawmill;

now, it makes specialty products for the aerospace, biotechnology and electronics industries.

Occasionally, a popular product outlives its company. Baker`s Chocolate

(1780) was favored by colonial cooks and sold in Abraham Lincoln`s New Salem, Ill., grocery store in the 1830s. Today, it remains a staple in well-stocked cupboards. The chocolate company itself was swallowed up by General Foods Corp. in 1927, but the original Baker`s logo is still in use.

Certain lines of business have proved to be exceptionally durable. Time has not greatly changed the citizenry`s need for news, insurance and the services of banks. Such companies are strongly represented on the 200-years-plus list: for example, Franklin Printing Co. (1728) and the Saturday Evening Post (1729), both founded by Benjamin Franklin; the Hartford (Conn.) Courant

(1764); Presbyterian Ministers` Fund (1717); Bank of New York (1784); and First National Bank of Boston (1784).

Etna M. Kelley, a Greenwich Village octogenarian who has been writing about business history for more than 30 years, has compiled her own list of the hardy. Retailing concerns tend to be among the long-lived, she says. Wholesalers, jobbers and supply companies--Barnett`s Laundry & Dry Cleaning

(1780), a cleaning products supplier, for one--tend to hang on because they can show high profitability with a small staff.

An old company ``gets a solidity, a loyalty, especially if it`s a family business,`` Kelley said. Even if other management steps in, that internal cohesiveness helps the organization to carry on. Finally, according to Kelley, for reasons unknown, funeral homes and seed companies, ``symbolic of death and life,`` seem to last a long time.

The following companies are a sampler of the perennials of American business:

-- J.E. Rhoads & Sons: Abigail Rhoads took over the tannery when her husband died in 1732, the year George Washington was born. J.E. Rhoads had already been in business in Marple, Pa., 12 miles from Philadelphia, for 30 years.

``It was an extraordinary thing for her to carry on,`` said Richard H. Rhoads, a member of the seventh generation in the business, which is now based in Newark, Del. ``It was a sloppy, dirty job.``

During the Industrial Revolution, the tannery began making leather beltings to be used in machinery and conveyor belts. Over the years, leather gave way to nylon and, more recently, thermoplastics.

Now, the company has a modest $5 million in annual sales, but it claims its product touches the lives of nearly everyone. ``You don`t eat a bagel or a bun`` that didn`t move along a conveyor belt using Rhoads` industrial belting, boasted John P. McGough, president and chief executive officer, who joined the company in 1983, the first non-family member to head operations.

The Rhoads family was always clear about its market niche and content with it. ``One paper machine may cost more than $2 million, but it will have under $25,000 worth of belting in it; that belting, however, is vital to the machine,`` said the late J. Edgar Rhoads, Richard Rhoads` cousin and predecessor as chairman, in an interview at the time of the Bicentennial, when he was 92. He said the company had never been especially interested in broad expansion or diversification, and he attributed that attitude to the family`s Quaker religion. ``For most of the company`s history, the owners have seemed to consider the business more a means to an end than an end in itself,`` he said. Family members occasionally took time off from the business to do public service work.